Touchstone (Meridian Series) (32 page)

       “Only
three systems left?” Nordhausen scratched his head. “I don’t understand. Why
don’t your associates simply turn on the rest. Surely you must have others.”

       “Once…”
LeGrand seemed to sag with the admission. “We had twenty operational Arch
complexes, but none of those sites exist now.”

       Maeve
could no longer restrain herself. “Good riddance to the lot of them! You see what
your meddling has achieved? Are you telling me the world outside this complex
is gone as well? Are you saying my Subaru isn’t parked in the lot outside; that
I can’t make a stop at Peet’s on the way home this evening; that there’s no
city
out there at all?”

       “I
really don’t know,” said LeGrand. “I was pulled forward and immediately sent
into the ready room for a quick briefing. I have no idea what lies beyond these
walls, but I know one thing—if any one of us should step beyond the influence
of the Arch field, we would immediately be exposed to the full force of
Paradox—annihilation may be too strong a word, but perhaps not. Who can say
what place you may hold in the
Meridian
taking shape out there? Who can say if any
of you exist there at all?”

       Maeve’s
hand was shaking. “So you’ve finally done it,” she said with real anger. “It’s
just as I feared.”

       “On
the contrary,” said LeGrand. “This was not our doing. Would we wish such a reversal
on ourselves?
No—our adversaries have brought
this calamity upon us.”

       “Just
as you did to them on that very first mission, correct?” Maeve held his gaze,
and LeGrand took a long breath.

       “Yes,”
he admitted. “That first mission to the
Hejaz
worked a transformation. When you prevented
the destruction of the second train, you set a new template for all future
time. You didn’t notice it in your own lives. The change rippled forward from
1917, but the effects did not gather strength until 2010, the date when
Palma
was to erupt as a result of the plot hatched by Ra’id Husan al Din. With your
help, we stopped that catastrophe from occurring, and then set a watch on that
island to secure it against any future tampering.  Can you blame us? You, of
all people, should understand, Miss Lindford. If the
Palma
event were not reversed, the whole of Western civilization would have spiraled
down into oblivion. We had to act to save ourselves—to save it all—Christendom,
Western culture, art, literature, the sciences—all the things you love so
dearly—would you rather we left them to the ashes?”

       “They
were meant to die,” said Paul. “It was all meant to end at
Palma
,
wasn’t it… The world we made possible was never meant to be. And this whole
affair, this Time war, was the result of it all. Our adversaries, as you call
them, were simply trying to preserve the integrity of the original
Meridian
, Maeve. I know this has crossed your own mind as well. Look…
it’s difficult for us to admit it but, to use an old phrase, we’ve all been
living on borrowed time.”

       LeGrand
looked from one to the other. “It doesn’t have to be that way,” he pleaded.
“That’s why I’m here. We’ve one more chance to set things right! We found out
what they were doing, you see, only too late to intervene. You were on to it,
professor. Your little trip to the
British
Museum
put us on the trail. It was the scroll, you
see, the rubbing.”

       Nordhausen
gave him a penetrating look. “Yes,” he said. “I always did suspect that the
image on that scroll was a rubbing. It was clearly not penned in ink or created
by any other drawing instrument. I determined that it was a rubbing from a
carved stone, just as you say.”

       “Well
you were quite correct, professor. Why we were so blind to the scheme amazes us
even now. We put our faith in technology, and thought our enemies would do the
same. We had every confidence that we could best the radicals. We were better
at it than they were, and we had the benefit of your original research as
well.” He pointed at Paul.

       “Imagine
our surprise when you took that fall in Wadi Rumm and discovered a working Arch,
in the form of a well,  that relied on something as deviously simple as an Oklo
reaction as its primary power source.” LeGrand’s eyebrows raised over his grey
eyes as he hurried along.

       “We
were winning, you see. They built their own version of the Arch, but we found
it, and destroyed it. And each time they built another we destroyed it again,
until we were certain we had done them all in.  We had them hounded in to the
far corners of the world, just like old Osama Bin Ladin from your era. He set
the model. He gave up his cell phone and relied on couriers—a decidedly low
tech      approach to the struggle that proved quite effective. He sat in his
cave and remained a thorn in
America
’s side for years, inspiring a whole
generation of  new insurgents as your government blundered into one grandiose
military action after another.”

       “Nothing
new in that,” said Robert. “Islam has been guided by so called ‘hidden imams’
for centuries. Whenever the culture comes under stress from external forces, it
generates these mythical figures: hidden imams, the Mahdi they believe will
emerge to lead them to victory. Then we get Fedayeen warriors rallying to the
call of
jihad
in an almost antibody like reaction against the outside
force.”

       “If
only the leaders of the West understood that,” said LeGrand. “They have no idea
how resilient these religious beliefs can be.”

       “Glad
to see you’ve had a change of heart,” said Maeve, but with little warmth.

       “Oh,
I can agree that we were wrong with our methods at times,” said LeGrand, “but
Western culture was simply too shining a force in the world to be contaminated
and destroyed by these radicals. If that meant war—unjust war, I’ll admit—then
so be it. Yes, you will be quick to lecture me on imperialism, colonialism and
all the other evils that the spread of our culture engendered. But we soon came
to the conclusion that empire had its benefits—benefits that outweighed the
liabilities.”

       “Oh,
certainly,” said Maeve. “Empire is wonderful—when you’re a citizen; when you’re
on the inside. It’s not so lovely when you are on the receiving end of the
bombs.”

       “I’ll
concede that. But what would you hand me in place of
Hiroshima
? Would you forgo the bomb if it meant a billion people in
Southeast Asia
would live under the tyranny of Imperial
Japan? And what would you hand me in place of
Dresden
?
Weren’t the concentration camps at
Auschwitz
enough? Cultures clash, nations struggle
with one another in the stream of history, and one side prevails. We’re
offering social equities, free markets, capitalism, democracy—“

       “Levy
Silver,” said Maeve, her arms folded in opposition.

       “I
don’t understand,” said LeGrand.

      
“…and
some of us were mostly brass under a thin film of gold,”
said Maeve. “…A
poem I read once. Free markets? Capitalism? Haven’t you studies the history of
the financial shenanigans that brought on the second great depression? The
problem with all the wonderful things that empire provides is that millions
have to die for them. Democracy? Equity? The West is guilty of a thousand
felonies on that count, monsieur LeGrand.”

       “Yes,
yes—we went through all this before, didn’t we? But look at the time!” His eyes
flashed up at the clock, laden with anxiety and emotion. “We can’t  sit here
and quibble over the morality of our culture—it’s dying! Yes, that means the
poetry you’re so very fond of, my dear—Shakespeare, Milton, Chaucer and all the
rest. They don’t exactly resonate with the edicts of Sharia and the Koran! Now
please—just hear me out. We’ve come to you again, in our last extreme. The
whole thing has come full circle. You chose once, and now you must make a
choice again. Will you help us? Because if you do not, then you forfeit the
entire heritage of Western culture. Nothing of it will survive this hour if you
do not act to save it.”

       LeGrand
looked from one to another, pleading, and it was Paul who spoke first.

       “What
is it you have come to ask of us?”

       “A
mission—from here—just like the first time. This is the first wound in the flow
of Time, here and now. No other Arch exists prior to this point on the continuum.
They can do what they might in years to come, but from here you can act with
impunity. No one else can interfere. Do you understand?”

       “Act
with impunity—yes, I suppose I do understand. But what would you have us do?”

       LeGrand
hesitated for the barest instant, then blurted out his response, desperate to
persuade. “You must find the touchstone! That’s the key. The professor had it
by the earlobe all along. It was Mister Kelly’s idea—the RAM bank, the
touchstone database. If you are going to change the history, how will you
preserve a record of the way things were? That’s why you sent out your
Golems—to keep watch, find variations in the data and warn you of a crisis like
this. Well it’s come, and what will you do about it? You’ve got to find their touchstone,
that’s what. Find it and
destroy
it before we loose the whole.”

Part IX

Decision

“Multitudes, multitudes in the valley of
decision”

—
Joel:
3:
14

25

Kelly
was the first
to speak,
gesturing to the lab complex as he did so. “The Golems are not operating,” he
said flatly. “We have no way of identifying a variation in the history without
them.”

       “Yes,”
said LeGrand, “but you do have the original RAM bank still operating, and it
has an imprint of the history as known to this point on the
Meridian
. That research will be essential... if our plan is to succeed.”

       “Research?”
Maeve leaned heavily on the table. “You mean to say you want us to find this
thing, this touchstone, by using the data stored in our RAM bank as a guide?
That could take years!”

       LeGrand
smiled wanly. “Possibly—just as the research on the Pushpoint that reversed
Palma
could have taken years as well. But we gave you a nudge in the right direction,
didn’t we? I have come to aid your quest again. I can put you on the target, if
you’ll hear me out. The rest will be up to you.”

       Maeve
pursed her lips, obviously struggling with the whole notion of using the Arch
again to support this man’s plans. “How do we know you’re telling us the truth?
How do we know you’re not just manipulating us into furthering your war plan?

       “I
was wondering if that would come up,” said LeGrand. “Fair question. As of this
moment, you have only my word. If you’d care to test my assertions concerning
the world outside the influence of this Nexus, be my guest. I would not advise
it, however. Paradox is quite unforgiving.”

       Paul
intervened, seeing that the present line of argument would lead them nowhere.
“You have information for us? You have a plan?”

       “We
hope as much.” Then LeGrand turned to Nordhausen.  “We are really in
your
debt, professor. The moment we realized our adversaries were using a decidedly
low tech solution, we immediately knew where it had to be hidden—give or take a
few hundred years.”

       Nordhausen
squinted, thinking hard. “In the past,” he said. “It would have to placed as
far back on the
Meridian
as possible.”

       “Of
course!” LeGrand smiled. “And what would you say is the oldest locus on the
Meridian
that would offer us promise?”

       “There
are hundreds of ancient sites that might qualify,” said Nordhausen, “but
considering the Assassins were using hieroglyphics, let’s confine our search to
Egypt
.”

       “Correct
again!” LeGrand clapped his hands, obviously relieved to have the discussion
moving in his direction, but still giving Maeve a cautious glance now and
again.

       “Well,”
Robert scratched the back of his neck. “We could have a look at the Step
Pyramids—they’re the oldest Pyramids known… About 2700 B.C.”

       “We’ll
have to do better than that,” said LeGrand. “Besides. The pyramids are too
obvious. They stand out like a sore thumb in history, begging to be excavated.
This touchstone, if indeed one exists, would have to be kept secret—hidden from
the prying eyes of a thousand generations.”